Her Husband's Harlot (3 page)

Apparently
not even the Marquess of Harteford himself.

Nicholas
Morgan, the sixth Marquess of Harteford, slowly released the luscious baggage
in front of him. He forced himself to count to ten in his head to cool the fire
in his blood. To forget the softness of the skin beneath his palm but a moment
ago, the delicate un-corseted waist he had circled with an arm, and the plush
rounded bottom that had wriggled enticingly against his groin.

Unbelievable.
He'd never accounted himself a prurient man, but now, for a second time in a
month, he found himself reduced to a morass of raging animal desires. The first
instance had been his wedding night; his loins had been fired by his beautiful,
virginal wife—who, as it turned out, wanted nothing to do with him. Now, he
felt his frustrated passions channel toward a ladybird, who might be beautiful—it
was difficult to ascertain in the darkness—but who certainly had little to do
with virginity.

Agony
twisted in his chest, not for the first time since his marriage. He had always
told himself that being raised in the stews did not necessitate acting like an
undisciplined beast. Not that a blue-blooded upbringing was any guarantee of gentlemanly
conduct: the sire he had never met, the former marquess, had been a famed
debaucher. Nicholas himself was living proof of that. For most of his life, he'd
believed himself the cast-off bastard of a whore. The truth concerning the
legitimacy of his birth, when it had been delivered by a somber-looking
solicitor a year ago, had turned his world on its end. It still hadn't righted
itself.

His
marriage only threw him further off balance.

I'm
not good enough for Helena
.
I
should never have married her
.

Yet from
the first moment he had laid eyes on her, he'd been held in her thrall. He'd
first spotted her four months ago, at a ball as tedious as all the rest. Having
made the obligatory rounds, he'd been intent upon escape when he noticed her. She
had occupied a chair at the back of the room. At first glance, he might have
missed her altogether, for her loose, putty-colored gown bore an unfortunate
resemblance to the drapery beside which she sat. Moreover, she slumped in her
chair, her shoulders curving inward like folded wings. It appeared that she
wished to withdraw into herself so fully that she might disappear altogether.

Yes,
he might have overlooked her completely, had she not turned her head at that
very moment. His breath had caught when her gaze collided with his. Her wide
tilted eyes, the color of sunlight reflected on a garden pond, had held an
expression of infinite sadness. An expression which, for some unfathomable
reason, wrought a twin ache in his own heart. He had waited for her expression
to change, that infinitesimal shifting of muscles that always occurred when he
was recognized. The curl to the lip, the slightly raised brow that bespoke
volumes.

Son
of a whore. Dirtied by trade.
The
Makeshift Marquess.

To
his astonishment, Helena's gaze had remained open and guileless, and a shy smile
surfaced on her lips. When her eyes had shifted downward, it had been with dainty
acquiescence rather than haughty dismissal. All at once, he had been struck by
a great many details about her: the fullness of her mouth, the Madonna-like
curve of her cheeks, the delicately shaped foot that swung invitingly from
beneath the heavy fortress of her dress. Then he had become intrigued by the
manner in which she sat apart from the other young ladies, not a prodigious
hothouse bloom nor yet a desperate wallflower. Rather, she was some furled,
exotic breed, a mysterious bud poised to yield its passionate secrets. For the
first time in his life, he had been gripped by a longing so intense that it dwarfed
his reasoning.

Despite
knowing better, he had sought an introduction and courted her, the only daughter
of the Earl of Northgate. His path had been cleared by way of his fortune. Northgate,
for all his venerable titles, lived in dun territory; the profligate gamester
could not afford to turn down the generous settlement accompanying Nicholas'
suit. With determined propriety, Nicholas had wooed his betrothed, to persuade
himself as much as anyone else that he could be worthy of so fine a lady. He
had taken Helena on chaperoned strolls in the park. They'd danced no more than
twice at any ball. He'd made polite conversation with her family over afternoon
tea, forcing down tiny watercress sandwiches drier than sand.

After
every proper encounter during their courtship, Nicholas had returned to his
chambers, rigid with want of her—in every way that was
not
decent. The carnal
desires he kept carefully hidden in her presence shattered through the dam of
his control. Lying in his bath, he would palm his rampant cock as he pictured
her. Steamy images of her on her stomach, her luscious hips draped over pillows
so that her pussy canted upwards, spread and waiting for him. She would be
looking back at him, her big eyes soft and glowing with lust and adoration.

Please
Nicholas
, she would beg.
Please
take me
.

In
his fantasy, he would take his time teasing his impatient girl. He'd finger her
silky cunny until she purred with pleasure. Then, kneeling between her thighs,
he would do what he had never done before, what he had never
wanted
to
do until he met her. Aye, from the first he'd wanted to put his mouth on her forbidden
flesh, to taste this part of her that must be as sweet as all the rest.

He
would eat her until she cried out her first release. Only then would he move
over her, entering her with such slow precision they could both feel inch by
burning inch his possession of her. There would be no doubt that he belonged there,
buried all the way into her womanly core. With her eager, sweet entreaties in
his ear, he would make love to her, teasing her with slow playful nudges,
appeasing her with deep silken thrusts.

As
the water rippled with his desperate strokes, his fantasies grew baser, more
intense. Sometimes, he would stop, plunged to the bollocks in her trembling
heat. He would moisten his fingers with her juices and explore the lovely
crevice of her buttocks until he found the secret pucker. He would slick that
delicate rim until it flared with excitement. Gently, he would ease his finger
into her nether passage even as his cock throbbed in the sheath beneath.

At
that moment, he would feel her entire body receiving him: his cock, his finger,
his very soul. There would be no escaping his possession of her, or her of him.
For surely, as she pleaded to be thoroughly fucked by her ill-bred husband,
loving it, loving
him
, he would fall only deeper under her spell.

Truly,
he was the worst kind of bastard. He had no right to touch his wife with hands dirtied
in the gutter and capable of unspeakable sins. Moreover, newly joined to the
ton
as he was, even he understood that true gentlemen did not slake desires of the
flesh in their wives' well-appointed bedchambers. No, they preserved their wives'
delicate sensibilities and found the sort of woman who would embrace this baser
side of life. For if Helena ever knew, ever
suspected
this animal side
of him ...

Nicholas
shuddered, recalling the revulsion and pain he'd seen on her face on their
wedding night. He had never made love to a lady before. In the past, his sexual
exchanges had functioned with one purpose in mind: to slake his physical needs.
But that night, it had been his wife trembling in innocence in his bed. She had
lain as rigid as a board, as still as death itself. He had fumbled to make
things as quick and least distressing as possible for her, but it had not been
enough.

To
this day, her screams of pain tortured him. How could he have hurt her so? Were
ladies so very different from the sort of females he'd known in his past? In
those brief moments, she had seen through the fragile skin of nobility to the depraved
beast that he was. The shame of it made his bones ache. Surely, she despised
him. She would never want him to touch her again.

To
spare her, he had to find a way to ease his torturous longing. The daily—nay,
thrice
a day—sessions of frigging himself were, unfortunately, not the answer. Stroking
his own cock somehow frustrated him more and served to inflame the already assiduous
desire for his wife. When he spewed his seed, he felt only a fleeting physical
release—and no relief at all from the aching, bone-deep loneliness.

Thus,
he'd come to terms with another solution. No longer able to deny the needs of
his flesh, Nicholas had sought out an appropriate venue. The Nunnery, known equally
for its depravity and its discretion, had seemed as good a place as any to
indulge his sinful appetites. But tonight, as he'd scanned the opulent
masquerade, he'd seen naught of interest. He'd danced with several doxies
nevertheless, telling himself that he simply needed to fuck a woman—any woman—to
relieve his lust. But the rubbing of their breasts against his chest, the coy
undulation of their hips against his thigh had brought no fire to his loins. A
particularly bold brunette had gone so far as to whisper her skills with a
certain flogging technique in his ear. He had felt nothing.

Despair
had slowly taken over, and he had roamed to an empty room above stairs. Alone
in a winged armchair, he'd thought of the only woman who mattered: how pink her
nipples must be, how he would tease them with his fingers until she begged for
him to suckle her tits ...  and instantly his sex sprang to attention. With a
sigh, he'd given in to the richness of his fantasy, undoing his trousers with
hands that became soft and white and tipped with perfect oval fingernails. He'd
sought solace in the way those hands gripped his cock, urging the blood to rush
to the stretched dome already slickening with seeped seed.

Except
solace was not to be his, not even in this. Because moments later, the door had
opened and instinctively he'd leapt from the chair to the nearest shelter. Bad
enough that he'd already been branded the Makeshift Marquess by the vicious
sticklers of the
ton
—he could only imagine the repercussions of being
caught in this particular solecism. So that was how he, Lord Nicholas Harteford,
found himself behind curtains, trousers undone, hiding from an amorous
ménage
à trois
intent upon fucking until dawn or one of them expired from
overexertion.

Having
an aversion to closed spaces, Nicholas had felt cold sweat prickle his brow as
time ticked away behind the smothering thick velvet. He had resisted, but his
mind began the inexorable slide down the dark tunnels of his past. The choke of
soot filled his throat, and he felt the urge to gasp for breath as an airless
passage closed around him. A sudden scuffling sound had him tensing against the
wall. He expected to see the terror of his dreams, the bearded face, the
menacing grin—

Instead,
he found himself discovered. Not by the screwing threesome, but by a light
skirt. A doxy who appeared out of nowhere, whose scent of orange blossoms and
spring leaves banished the dank odors of his memories. Whose plump arse and
creamy breasts tempted his hands beyond comprehension. Lust shot through him
like a geyser, instantly dislodging the panic.

Verily,
his life was fast becoming a farce.

Unable
to avoid the reality of his situation any longer, Nicholas studied his partner in
hiding. After her initial shock at finding company behind the drapery, the
nymph scrupulously avoided making eye contact with him. She appeared absorbed
by the scene beyond the velvet; only her profile was revealed to him. Her feathered
mask concealed much of her face, but he would guess delicate cheekbones accompanied
the piquant point of her chin. In the faint moonlight, he could not make out
the color of her eyes, but they appeared huge and luminous, seductively framed
by dark, sweeping lashes and smoky eyelids.

And
her mouth ... he could see its generous bottom curve, how it jutted out in
saucy welcome. Even in the dimness, he could tell that it had been painted red.
A siren's red. Luscious and ripe, a cherry for the tasting. The fruit of her
lips trembled, and he realized she was engrossed by the activities visible through
the slit of drapery.
The naughty little minx.
Reluctant amusement
mingled with burgeoning arousal as he angled his head forward, so that he, too,
could catch the sex play.

Illuminated
by candlelight, a slim brunette writhed on her back as one of the men, a stocky,
sandy-haired fellow, drove eagerly between her legs. She appeared to be
participating with great enthusiasm from the way her slender legs encircled the
man's hips and drew him in deeper with each thrust. Beside her on the carpet, a
blonde man lay naked on his side. His erection flared crimson within the ardent
clasp of her hand. He bent his head to sample her apple-sized breasts.

"Lovely
Lucy, do you like what Brookeston is doing to your cunt?" The blonde man
inquired after a moment. His fingers plucked playfully at her small dark
nipples.

"Oh,
yes," Lucy panted, arching her spine. "Lord Brookeston ... ram your
rod into my cunt ...  my hungry cunt needs your fucking ... feel how wet it is,
how it salivates for your mighty sword ... oh please ... yes, like that, pierce
me harder ... !"